The weather warm, the handwriting familiar. The weather warm, the handwriting familiar. Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below. Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below. The familiar waters below my warm hand. Into handwriting your weather flies you letter the from the. I always cross the highest letter, the thinnest bird. Below the waters of my warm familiar pain, Another hand to remember your handwriting. The weather perched for me on the shore. Quick, your nervous branch flew from love. Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it was with to to.
NOTE:The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d’oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words. ‘Japan’ is another poem by Billy Collins that works well in class.
and whisper it into each of his long white ears. It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell with the moth sleeping on its surface,
Japan Today I pass the time reading a favourite haiku, saying the few words over and over.
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating pressure of the moth on the surface of the iron bell.
It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again.
When I say it at the window, the bell is the world And I am the moth resting there.
I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room.
When I say it into the mirror, I am the heavy bell and the moth is life with its papery wings.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it.
and the moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
And when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor
Billy Collins
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